


Madame Roland Presents the Barbarian Salon

by ThermidorValkyrie



Category: French Revolution RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25498819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThermidorValkyrie/pseuds/ThermidorValkyrie
Summary: The revolutionaries gather at Madame Roland's salon to discuss the past and the future.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Madame Roland Presents the Barbarian Salon

_“It is civilized folk who are the real barbarians.” – Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan_

It was January, 1792. I can say “January” because the Republican calendar would not come into existence for some time yet. A year later, after the fanatics stripped the last _ancien régime_ vestiges from even the dates, it would be called “Nivôse”, meaning “snowy”. An apt name – snow choked the Parisian streets that day, and from my warm salon in the Hôtel Britannique I worried for the peasants suffering out in the cold. My concern was genuine, that I know, but so was my satisfaction with my warm fireplace and snug apartments. I felt comfortable and safe. I was such a fool.

In those days, everything in Paris glittered with promise. Louis XVI and his Austrian bride had not yet died on the guillotine. I, Manon Roland, was the toast of Paris. My husband Jean was a leader on the political scene, and I enjoyed the role of his witty and diverting wife. The most brilliant minds in the city flocked to my salon. We discussed politics, religion, art, history, whatever we believed would hasten France’s course toward what seemed its inevitable form: a peaceful, perfect republic. Statesmen laughed and drank champagne I’d brought with me from Lyons. Only months later, they would call for each others’ heads, but at the time we had no inkling of what was to come. The Revolution had not yet turned inward and begun to eat its own. Gironde was only a region, not a rallying cry, and the Jacobins had not fragmented into a hundred bleating voices. “Terror” was a word fit only for monarchs.

My husband and I had guests, as we often did in those days. Our friends Jacques-Pierre Brissot and Jérôme Pétion stood by a window, sipping sherry against the cold. Georges Danton, that mountain of a man, made himself comfortable in an armchair. Jean and I sat beside one another in high-backed chairs, and Maximilien Robespierre remained alone on a richly embroidered couch. He looked comically small, perched precisely in the center of the large space all by himself. No one ever wanted to sit next to Maximilien. Even then, I suppose, we all sensed the pale man with the pedantic chill would ultimately be the death of us.

“Madame Roland, thank you once again for the invitation!” Pétion pronounced loudly, raising his glass. I nodded graciously, hiding a smile. Pétion was known for his outlandish orations and ideas. “I declare,” he continued, “your salon is without doubt the greatest gift the Enlightenment has brought to Europe.”

Brissot laughed. “While Manon’s parties are indeed delightful, that may be over-stating it a bit.”

“Of course it is!” Danton exclaimed, rising to pour himself his third helping of wine. “Have you tasted what the Academy of Bordeaux’s been doing recently? Science applied to viticulture. That, my friends, is true Enlightenment beauty.”

Jean smiled and turned to me. “I don’t know, Georges,” he replied. “I am going to have to support my lovely wife on this one.”

I smiled. “Thank you, my dear. I wish I could claim such a title. ‘Madame Manon Roland: Greatest Hostess of the Eighteenth Century.’ It has a certain ring, don’t you think?” I laughed and turned to Maximilien. “What do you think, Monsieur Robespierre?” I asked jokingly. “What is the Enlightenment’s greatest gift?”

“The illumination of the ideal political structure,” he replied, his thin face grave. “As outlined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.” He delicately removed his round spectacles and began polishing them on the hem of his silk waistcoat. “I should think that was obvious.”

An uncomfortable silence hovered over the room before Danton, true to form, shattered it with his deep guffaw. “You sure know how to ruin a good joke, Maxime,” he laughed, leaning over to punch Robespierre playfully in the shoulder. I froze; I had no idea how the prudish lawyer would respond. I half expected him to pull out a pistol and shoot Danton for the crime of touching his sacred person. Fortunately, Maximilien settled for looking affronted.

“In all honesty, though,” my husband said, typically ignorant of the tense situation surrounding him, “the Enlightenment has brought us an unprecedented level of culture and learning. People say the Renaissance was the end of the Dark Ages, but if you ask me, we’ve only just escaped them.”

Brissot nodded thoughtfully, swirling the sherry around in his glass. “I agree. The Renaissance may have restored a few Classical virtues, but for the most part it remained stuck in medieval vulgarity. For all their talk of Plato, the early humanists were blinded by esoteric, mystical nonsense. They had no concept of Newtonian science, and the best political philosophy they could produce was _The Prince_. Some of the most prominent Renaissance men were tyrants who, despite their pretty words, tortured and murdered with shocking nonchalance. If you ask me, they were no better than barbarians.”

“Hey,” Danton interjected, leaning back contentedly in his chair. A sloppy grin covered his wide, scarred face. “Don’t say such cruel things about us barbarians. We are a proud people with a long and noble history.”

I laughed. “Monsieur Danton, there is no doubt in my mind you are indeed the greatest barbarian of them all. In fact, I believe half the girls in Paris would vouch for that.”

“Oh, more than half, dear Manon,” Danton replied, winking. “You underestimate me.”

Brissot and Jean both chuckled, but Maximilien shot his fellow Jacobin a scathing glance. Pétion moved to take the empty armchair beside me. “Georges has a point,” he said, setting down his sherry. “Barbarians, as we’re wont to call them, are rarely brutal or evil people. Of course, they also do not typically revel in Danton-esque hedonism. The very opposite, in fact. Uncorrupted by decadent civilization, they have a much firmer grasp of compassion, happiness, or justice than the most educated.”

“You’re talking about Europe before the Romans - the Franks, the Gauls,” Jean said.

Danton shook his head indulgently. “Sorry, Pétion, I have to disagree. Your utopia doesn’t exist. Wherever you go, men are men. We’re going to cheat and brawl and backstab, because we’re all driven by the same things.”

Brissot smiled at Danton’s antics. “And what would those be, perchance?”

The thickset revolutionary ticked them off on his fingers. “Money, drink, and women. We can’t help it; we’re all vulnerable to their dubious charms. Well, except for Maxime here.” Danton gestured with his wine glass towards the primly-dressed Jacobin. “He’s the only person I know, male or female, rich or poor, French or American, who’s driven totally and completely by Virtue with a capital ‘V’”.

Maximilien didn’t respond to the taunt – that would have been beneath his dignity – but behind his spectacles his grey eyes seethed. Though the statement certainly described his own image of himself, coming from Danton it sounded like an insult. I had no doubt it was intended as such.

“What about other foreigners?” Jean asked suddenly. Once again I was grateful for my husband’s blindness to social strain. “Other Europeans, I mean. The English seem like barbarians sometimes. Their food, after all...”

“Quite!” Pétion exclaimed. “Brutish, uncultured swine…”

Brissot sighed. “That, Jérôme, is a gross misjudgment of a complex and formidable people.” He drained his glass of sherry and set it down heavily on the windowsill. An aspiring diplomat, Brissot considered foreign relations an uncommonly serious matter. “I foresee the English posing a significant threat to our nascent Revolution. It may soon come to blows.”

“Monsieur Brissot, do you mean war?” I gasped.

“Indeed I do, Madame,” he replied solemnly. “The rest of Europe will not take our perceived insolence lying down. We must fight to protect our newly-won rights, and that means first and foremost eliminating our enemies abroad…”

“You are wrong.”

As one, the room turned to look at Maximilien. He stared unblinkingly back, considering us with flat, inscrutable eyes. I spoke. “Monsieur Robespierre, do you believe war will not be necessary?”

“War is not the point,” he replied coolly. “Whether or not France marches against other nations is immaterial. To protect the Revolution, we must look inward. We must eliminate those traitorous elements that threaten our safety from within.”

Jean laughed uncomfortably. Even he was picking up on the stress this time. “And how do you propose to do that?”

Maximilien’s cold, clipped inflection never changed. “Harshly.”

That’s all I remember of that day. I don’t recall the stilted comments that surely followed, or the quick departures that must have come. It doesn’t matter; they are not what I wish to record here. I swore I would never write my memoirs, but a few weeks in this squalid prison cell have changed all of that. Mere months after this meeting, the incorruptible Maximilien turned against us. The battle was long and desperate, and in the end we lost. Because we would not condone murder, the moderate faction earned Maximilien’s unrelenting antipathy. Because we would not sanction the massacre of innocent Frenchmen, we were denounced.

The savage individuals we discussed that day have their own faults and unique brutalities. Some were warmongers, some were fools, but only one slavered for the blood of his own people. The tiny man who once shared our idle company lusted for death, and at last he required ours. My husband and Pétion fled the government soldiers. Brissot and I were captured. Now we wait for our turn with Madame la Guillotine, and I fear Georges Danton will not be long behind us. It seems we are those “traitorous elements” Maximilien spoke of. As promised, he did not shrink from dealing harshly with us.

Maximilien Robespierre is a child of the Enlightenment. He is well-educated and better read. He wears immaculate suits and powdered wigs. When he speaks, his philosophical orations bring men to tears. He is poised, he is polished, and he is patriotic. Looking at him, one cannot envision a more ideal European gentleman.

He is also the most barbaric man I’ve ever known.


End file.
